Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. FROM CAVERNS DARK, by EDWARD CARPENTER


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. FROM CAVERNS DARK, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Behold, a hundred and a thousand lives
Last Line: Lord of the world from caverns dark within thee.
Subject(s): Man-woman Relationships; Romance; Male-female Relations


BEHOLD, a hundred and a thousand lives,
And thousands more, in caverns dark within thee.
No secret wish that flits along thy fancy,
But lo! far back in some ancestral form
It dwelt, had eyes and feet, and ranged its life:
No thought, no dream, but long-fead men and women
Live in the quiet murmur of its wings
Far down, far down, and move about thy brain
And look on the Sun again.

Ah, silence! hearest not the whispering
In darkness, of those countless multitudes?—
That maiden fair who languished out her soul,
Long generations back, and spake no word;
That father whose young daughter to the grave
Bore down his heart with hers; that sturdy soldier
Who hacked and hewed in fervent piety
All who opposed him; that untiring mother
Who wore her life out for her children; aye,
And all the throngs that passed thro' city streets
Centuries gone, 'neath overhanging gables,
Or toiled on rustic leas—the cleric youth
Who dreamed romance in manuscript and missal,
Gurth herding pigs and whittling bow and arrows
In beechen forests; haughty baron, and serf,
And vain and timid and night-mare-ridden souls,
And trustful, proud, ambitious—all are there!
Hearest the whispering of multitudes?—
All dead—yet all are there.

And ages farther, born of the time before man walked the earth,
Wild forms behold! and roaming spirits of animals,
Hungering, thirsting, loving—beautiful beings
That saw and wondered worshiping each other,
And found their mates and fought their enemies,
And sang and danced and hoarded, skulked and scolded,
In passion's every mood; yet never once
Turned eyes of consciousness upon themselves.
Unwieldy beasts that bellowed through the tree-ferns for their young,
And flying dragons and the roaring lion,
And bats and moths just glimmering thro' the dark
Like faintest memories—aye, all are there!
Hearest the whispering of multitudes?—
All dead—yet all are there.

And in the ages yet to come the same:
A hundred and a thousand lives within thee!
And thousands more—which yet shall walk the Earth.
Dreams, faint desires, scarce conscious of themselves
Shall take swift shape and people the lands with forms
Of thy conceiving, strange similitudes
Even of thyself.
And, hungering thirsting loving, beautiful beings
Sprung from thy heart and brain and sexual part,
Half animal, half angel,
Shall see and wonder worshiping each other;
And find their mates and front their enemies
Onward through long processions of the Suns,
By shores of other continents than now,
In unimagined haunts and cities fair,
To where they fade from view and take at last
Their flight from Earth to homes beyond the Earth.

This mighty Life—past present and to come—
Enfolds thee. This thou art. This thou upgatherest;
And this Thou, tiny creature, pourest forth—
Where now thou standest—
Lord of the world from caverns dark within thee.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net